Ring Around the Rosie Lyrics
Hold hands, walk in a circle, fall down and laugh. Ring Around the Rosie was first printed in the 1880s, and despite the famous story, it is almost certainly not about the plague.
Ring Around the Rosie
Ring around the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.
The British version (The Real Mother Goose, 1916)
Ring a ring o' roses,
A pocketful of posies.
Tisha! Tisha!
We all fall down.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/ring-around-the-rosie/
- Type
- Action Songs
- First published
- 1881 (British), 1883 (American)
- Tune
- Traditional
- Best for ages
- 2 to 6 years
Hand Motions and Actions
| When you sing | Do this |
|---|---|
| Ring around the rosie | Everyone holds hands in a circle and walks or skips around. |
| A pocket full of posies | Keep walking around, swinging your joined hands. |
| Ashes! Ashes! | Stop, let go of hands and wave your arms or pretend to sneeze. |
| We all fall down | Everyone drops gently to the floor. The last one down can start the next round. |
What Does Ring Around the Rosie Mean?
For children, the rhyme is simply the words to a game: go around, then fall down and laugh. "Rosie" is a rose or a ring of roses, and "posies" are small bunches of flowers.
Many adults have heard that the rhyme describes the Great Plague of 1665: the rosy rash, posies carried against bad smells, sneezing and falling down dead. It is a good story, but folklorists such as Iona and Peter Opie rejected it. The rhyme was not written down until the 1880s, the plague explanation only appeared in the mid-1900s, and old versions do not even share the "ashes" or sneezing line. In America, some early versions end with everyone squatting or curtsying rather than falling.
History and Origin
The first printed version appeared in England in 1881, in Kate Greenaway's illustrated Mother Goose. Two years later, in 1883, the folklorist William Wells Newell recorded several American versions in Games and Songs of American Children. The words varied a lot from place to place, which is normal for a rhyme passed on by children in the playground.
In Britain the rhyme is usually sung as "Ring a ring o' roses" with a sneeze ("A-tishoo! A-tishoo!") before the fall. The older British text is shown below the lyrics.
Learning Activities
- Freeze version: instead of falling, everyone freezes like a statue. The first to wobble starts the next round.
- Slow and fast: walk very slowly the first time and skip quickly the second.
- Flower posies: collect or draw small bunches of flowers and count the colors.